Nothing's Bad Luck

by C. M. Kushins

  One afternoon that spring, he caught the attention of a pretty transfer student. Like Warren, Violet Santangelo was new to Fairfax. She had already attended three different high schools in that year alone and the transient nature of her adolescence had hit her hard. As she spied him noodling with his guitar, she sensed a kindred spirit. “I was sitting on the grass and Warren had his guitar and, call it ‘divine intervention,’ I went right over to him,” she remembered. And while it was uncharacteristic of her to initiate a conversation with a boy she didn’t know, in doing so, the shy seventeen-year-old (who would later adopt the stage name “Laura Kenyon”) inadvertently launched both of their careers in the music industry.

  Kenyon’s family had just relocated from Chicago and the sunny atmosphere of Los Angeles presented a fair amount of culture shock. The former East Coast Italian girl found it difficult to relate to the laid-back, blond surfer types who seemed to be everywhere. “When I got to California, the kids were sitting around during fourth period and I asked, ‘Why aren’t you in class?’ They were all sitting around eating fruit and one of them said to me, ‘Well, it’s Nutrition Period.’ And I thought, ‘Oh boy, this place is serious.’”

  Coming from a playful and sarcastic family, Kenyon wasn’t taken aback by Warren’s initial standoffishness or his quips directed toward her. Instead, she played along. Her ability to grasp his dry humor—and even give it right back—was a trait that immediately won him over. “I also had that streak,” she remembered, “and maybe he noticed that I had been sitting all by myself, too. But our connection happened right away.”

  While Warren was no stranger to cruising around to pick up girls, he was unaccustomed to one making the first move. His awkwardness came out as both boyish charm and some of his father’s old-fashioned chauvinism. As he took Kenyon for a ride in the Corvette Stingray, he tried to play it cool, feigning disgust at the classical music that popped up on his car radio. “I hate that shit,” he barked. It was obviously for her benefit, but that reflexive temper made a lasting impression on her. “That was one of the first indications I had about him,” she recalled. “Here was a strong person who was angry. Coming from the family that I had, I could handle it and maybe Warren knew it. When you’re young, you just sense all that, and I sensed an inner anger.”

  Warren took her back to the apartment he shared with his father. Things didn’t go smoothly, as William Zevon was recovering from another booze-soaked gambling marathon. “When I walked in, his father was sitting right there,” Kenyon remembered. “He was wearing a beige shirt and rumpled pants and looked really disheveled and unshaven and looked like a really miserable man.”

  Soon after, Kenyon would learn just how miserable William was capable of being. During a visit to the Zevon home a few weeks later, she and Warren entered to find that William was stone drunk in the middle of the day. “He called me a ‘whore’ and a ‘snake’ and suggested I dig a hole in the ground and crawl into it,” she recalled. To her surprise, Warren merely laughed it off. She then understood that much of Warren’s own temper stemmed from his father.

  Kenyon recalled that Warren’s bedroom was in a constant state of disarray and always appeared “transient” in its neglect. Books, notes, and record albums littered the floor and unmade bed. As music was his only priority, Warren just couldn’t be bothered to face any responsibility that he viewed as mundane, such as tidying up or folding clothes.

  That afternoon, they sat on his bed for hours, singing Beatles songs together and trying out two-part harmonies. Warren was excited to discover that Kenyon shared his passion for music and was quite a natural singer, and she was instantly impressed with his original songs and his guitar playing. Although it was still uncertain if she viewed him romantically, Warren seemed at ease knowing he might have found a potential collaborator. While all his buddies had returned home following the Ben Shapiro fiasco, he had remained steadfast in his commitment to get recorded. A new partner could be a great find.

  The two made plans to jam together again. This time, however, at her house.

  For the next few weeks, the two met every day after school. They usually ended up at the Santangelo home, where her parents were delighted to hear the duo rehearsing together or to watch Warren perform on the family’s sixty-six-key piano. As both he and Kenyon were originally from Chicago, they bonded over shared memories of the Clark Theater, as well as their mutual interests in jazz, folk music, literature, and movies. Although platonic, it was the first intimate relationship for either of them. “There was a love between us,” Kenyon remembered. “It was so innocent and sweet.”

  Sweet as the love may have been, Warren was, nonetheless, a teenage boy. One afternoon, he made his lone attempt to make the relationship physical. When Kenyon rebuffed his advances, Warren offered a glimpse of the anger she had long suspected he suppressed. “He tried to kiss me one time,” she recalled, “but I didn’t have those feelings for him. He was hurt and embarrassed and called me a lesbian. We eventually made up and our time together continued.” Having met Warren’s father and experienced his volatile demeanor firsthand, she tried hard to understand Warren’s constant angst. “But that was the hardest part about knowing him. That was the person that had turned the radio off in the car and cursed the music our first afternoon together. That anger was always there.”

  Warren made amends with Kenyon by offering her the greatest compliment she would ever receive from him. “You know what I like about you?” he had quietly asked her. “When you’re seventy, you’ll still have something to say.”

  And moments like that kept her at his side.

  One night while visiting Kenyon’s home, her family asked the duo to perform some of their songs for the evening’s dinner guests. It was the first time they had been asked to show off their well-rehearsed skills and, at least in Kenyon’s case, to perform for an audience of any size. Confident as ever, Warren picked up his acoustic guitar and the two ran through a few favorite Beatles tunes. Unbeknownst to either, there was a special guest in attendance that night.

  “My older sister was dating a former child actor named Michael Burns,” Kenyon remembered. “His mother worked at White Whale Records, which had discovered the Turtles, and was dating one of its founders, a man named Lee Lasseff. Michael came up to us after we had performed for everyone and said that he wanted to tell his mom all about us. Warren and I were absolutely ecstatic.” True to his word, Burns was able to set up a meeting between Lasseff and the young folk duo later that same week.

  Lasseff and business partner Ted Feigin had founded White Whale Records in 1963 following a visit to the Revelaire Club in Los Angeles. There, they had seen a performance by a local surf rock band calling themselves the Crossfires. Recognizing potential in the group, Lasseff and Feigin signed them as White Whale’s first artists. In turn, the band’s leaders, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, had taken a cue from popular radio favorite the Byrds and retooled their sound for a more folkish quality. Renamed the Turtles, the band recorded a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe” and scored the burgeoning record label an instant hit. Having hit pay dirt, White Whale’s founders continued to produce more Turtles singles, all of which cracked the Top 30 during the label’s first year.

  Not wanting their overnight success to quickly fade, the two founders were on an active lookout for new talent. With a youthful innocence reminiscent of other successful boy-girl folk duos such as Ian and Sylvia, Warren and Laura Kenyon (still known by the exotic-sounding Violet Santangelo), perfectly fit the bill.

  In preparation for their meeting at White Whale, Warren and Kenyon decided they needed to name their act. They sat at the Santangelos’ kitchen table and brainstormed for hours. Warren was an admirer of e.e. cummings and opted to mimic the poet’s stylish discounting of capitalization for his stage name, then coupled it with an homage to his favorite color at the time—green. Kenyon, for her part, drew inspiration from her favorite French film, Serge Bourguignon’s Sundays and Cybèle
. A few days later, “lyme and cybelle” walked into Lee Lasseff’s luxurious office on Sunset Boulevard.

  “Lee Lasseff brought us into his office, a huge white room with a huge desk,” Kenyon remembered. “It was surreal. You could sense this odd feeling, like a sleazy thing. It was intimidating for a shy seventeen-year-old.” For the meeting, Lasseff was joined by Feigin, a significantly taller man who, when standing next to his partner, gave the two an appearance of a mismatched comedy act. They asked Warren and Kenyon to play some songs and were immediately pleased with what they heard, offering a contract on the spot for the release of at least one single. To Warren’s additional delight, Lasseff and Feigin had expressed a particular enthusiasm for his songwriting abilities and instructed the duo to prepare an original song for the recording session. If the teens hadn’t been intimidated before, they certainly were now. Up until that point, Kenyon had only sung for friends and family, while Warren acknowledged that this was his first real attempt at composing a professional piece of music. Both knew there was a lot riding on the opportunity.

  Lasseff and Feigin began to scout for the appropriate producer to helm lyme and cybelle’s debut. They chose Dayton “Bones” Howe, a twenty-eight-year-old sound engineer who had previously worked with Elvis Presley and the Mamas and the Papas. For the latter, Howe had engineered “California Dreamin’” earlier that same year, quickly establishing himself as a major studio presence. The White Whale moguls yearned for that same kind of success, while Howe was looking for advancement as a producer. He had also co-produced White Whale’s biggest hit, “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” and felt his reputation warranted such a leap. When Lasseff and Feigin approached their promotional team for a recommendation as to who should helm lyme and cybelle’s first track, Howe was unanimously selected.

  “At the time, I was an independent studio engineer,” recalled Howe. “I had engineered a lot of records by then and quite a few turned out to be hits. People began to talk about me—first the musicians, whom I worked well with, and then people in the industry. I saw the lyme and cybelle debut as an opportunity to get another song on the radio while I was still dealing with the insanity of the Turtles.” He met with Warren and Kenyon at White Whale a few weeks later and was enthralled with the raw talent that he heard, comparing Kenyon’s voice to “freshly fallen snow.” Howe also felt a connection with Warren’s hunger for perfection.

  With a recording contract in hand, Warren borrowed enough money from his father to rent an apartment in the Hollywood Hills. The small bachelor pad, located on Orchid Avenue, soon became his personal think tank, a haven where he could play as loudly as he wanted, whenever he wanted. The threat of Fresno had been permanently extinguished, as had any intention of returning to school in the fall. While most sixteen-year-olds were contemplating upcoming vacations and their first summer jobs, Warren had a record contract and a place of his own. As far as he was concerned, his childhood was happily over.

  Before he could enjoy all the freedoms that living alone afforded, however, Warren threw himself into finishing his first assignment for White Whale. Fueled at the prospect of having a song on the radio, he wracked his brain for an idea that he and Kenyon could present to the label. Always with a guitar he began to develop a simple riff that he had already been toying with—something psychedelic that could be adapted perfectly for an acoustic duet. The composition also had the potential to work well if sped up, or if he were asked to make it “catchier” for the airwaves. His recent interest in “raga rock,” the Indian-influenced, trippy sound that the Beatles would soon take into the mainstream, rounded out the unique tone.

  Kenyon recalled that Warren was the first person she had ever heard experimenting with the Indian style. “That riff that he came up with, that was the thing that he was most interested in,” she said. “The sounds themselves, that’s what got him—and that’s really what makes a real composer. They get something stuck in their head, a motif. And that was Warren. He looked at me and said, ‘I have this thing I’m working on—now improvise over it.’ I did, and I wrote those lyrics right on the spot.” The two named their composition “Follow Me.”

  Throughout his career, many of Warren’s best-known songs were collaborative efforts, although he would sometimes go to great lengths to conceal that fact. As his reputation as a songwriter grew, that trend would continue—sometimes to disastrous results. His youthful insistence on sole songwriting credit sometimes led to the termination of close friendships. At the time, however, he and Kenyon were both fresh blood in the music industry and shared an equal desire to deliver a quality song for White Whale as soon as possible. Kenyon was also nervous about disappointing Warren, whose ambition to be a professional musician predated their friendship. She was reluctant to offer any ideas he might consider subpar to his own high standards. “It was so scary because I didn’t want to lose him,” she later admitted, “and the whole idea of having a record contract was just too fabulous to ruin.”

  Only a few days after moving in, Warren invited Kenyon and Howe to his new apartment, presenting them with a polished version of “Follow Me.” He also had a mixed bag of assorted compositions to show Howe and spent the evening jumping back and forth between his guitars and the new piano he had bought. The producer was truly impressed with the wide array of genres that Warren was capable of playing—jazz, blues, rock, and classical alike. But with “Follow Me,” Howe believed that the duo had a real shot at a hit. “We went through a bunch of material and Warren came up with this thing, ‘Follow Me,’” remembered Howe. “I thought that it had enough heat in it as a track to really get some attention.” The following afternoon, the three of them presented it to a very satisfied Lasseff at the White Whale office. The recording session was immediately booked.

  Just prior to the recording date, Warren crafted a new persona for himself, making his stage name “stephen lyme,” complete with a new wardrobe entirely consisting of green garments. “He had decked the whole apartment in green, too,” remembered Howe, “and even had a fake nickname to match, ‘Sandy.’ So it was sometimes ‘Stephen,’ with the small ‘s,’ or sometimes ‘Sandy.’ I called him Warren to make it easier on us all.”

  The confusing, interchanging personas didn’t last long. Warren remembered that his cousin, Sandford, was already his family’s original “Sandy,” and eventually considered that two stage names may be one too many. Processing an ever-evolving image, however, would last his entire career.

  Following White Whale’s approval, turnaround became rapid. Howe brought Warren and Kenyon into Sunset Studios, believing that the song—which to him sounded “like a pipe dream come to life”—would eventually be viewed as the first true psychedelic record. A musician himself, Howe sat in for the sessions on drums, proving himself a perfect foil for the multitalented Warren. The two also shared an appreciation for using unorthodox instrumentation, demonstrated in Howe’s suggestion to use a jawbone as part of the song’s percussion section. “It was an easy record to make,” recalled Howe. “[Warren and Kenyon] took direction in the studio very well and we basically built the song off of the rhythm section that I put together. We added their parts later, the way we often did in the studio at the time, and I was happy when it ended up having a kind of samba feel to it. Warren really got a kick out of that jawbone.”

  For the B-side, White Whale selected “Like the Seasons,” another original that Warren and Kenyon had composed together. Increasingly afraid to lose Warren as a friend and partner, she held her tongue when it was released without her co-writing credit. That decision proved difficult when she learned that the Turtles were planning to cover it. Their front men, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, admired Warren’s songwriting style and were soon introducing him around the Los Angeles music scene. With their influence, he was dually signed as a house songwriter to White Whale’s affiliate division, Ishmael Music.

  The new status earned Warren the recognition he had hoped for, yet came with certain personal repercussions. While
it provided the leverage to compose more varied kinds of music for the company’s other bands, it also gave him a stricter claim over any future songs that saw his name attached—something that could negatively affect his working relationship with Kenyon.

  As “Follow Me / Like the Seasons” was only the seventh single that White Whale had released since the company’s formation, Lasseff and Feigin wanted to push its chart potential. To generate a buzz, Warren and Kenyon were booked at a few local venues around Southern California, the largest of which was a national television appearance on the popular variety program The Lloyd Thaxton Show. For many teenagers, Thaxton dictated what was hot and hip and was regarded as Los Angeles’s answer to Ed Sullivan. The Turtles, the Kingston Trio, and Marvin Gaye had all appeared on the program just prior to achieving larger fame. The night that Warren and Kenyon performed, they were joined by chart-topper Jackie DeShannon. “I had a friend do our costumes,” remembered Kenyon. “We were incredibly nervous and Warren knew that we needed a unique look. I had these white stockings, knickers, and this cashmere suit. Warren wore the same colors and we looked really, really great when they brought us out to perform.”

  The exposure worked and, to the surprise of White Whale and the performers themselves, “Follow Me” cracked the local Top 10. More importantly, the track peaked at 65 on the national Billboard pop charts that April—a strong achievement for a new act’s debut.

  Eager to keep the momentum going, Lasseff and Feigin instructed Howe to get Warren and Kenyon back into the studio as soon as possible.

  Initially, Howe wanted to produce a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” as the duo’s second release, but the label nixed his suggestion in favor of Bob Dylan’s “If You Gotta Go, Go Now.” The switch was just fine with Warren, as Dylan was, and would remain, one of his songwriting idols. According to Howe, White Whale’s priorities at the time had slowly shifted to reflect other companies within the music industry—pushing for full albums over singles, ultimately leading to larger profits. “That was the mentality,” recalled Howe. “You know, you only made an album if you had a hit single that you could attach to it, then sell a few thousand albums and make some real money. White Whale hadn’t always been an ‘album-oriented’ company, but it changed after the Turtles’ ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe.’ So, we did a bunch of demos and ‘If You Gotta Go, Go Now’ was the only one that seemed like it had any possibilities. Unfortunately, it really didn’t go anywhere.”